LAE FATE OR THE KELTS ; 21 
a digression may be made here to discuss the point 
whether this evidence is sufficiently conclusive to warrant 
implicit belief in a theory so out of harmony with the 
general course of nature. The difficulties of observing 
accurately the movements of fish are proverbial. Even in 
the small streams of this country we are far from having 
discovered all the secrets of the domestic economy of the 
salmon, and, with all due deference to eminent authorities 
on the spot, it may be questioned whether the inference 
drawn from the presence of great numbers of dead fish in 
the Fraser or the Sacramento is correct. These rivers are 
literally teeming with salmon, which find in them all the 
conveniences of nature without any of the impediments 
which man, in more populous countries, has placed in 
their way. The salmon have—or had until their abundance 
tempted settlers to establish the vast “canneries ” where so 
many million pounds of salmon are annually preserved in 
tins—uninterrupted access to these rivers, in the upper waters 
of which they have heavy rapids to surmount: passing 
through these they get more or less bruised, while on the 
return journey they are hampered by ice above as well as by 
rocks beneath. Reaching the spawning beds in prodigious 
numbers, they fight just as their congeners do in England : 
and, where the combatants are so many, the wounded are of 
course numerous in proportion. The dead fish attract at- 
tention, because they come down in hundreds instead of by 
units and tens : but the thousands returning in safety beneath 
the shelter of a deep and muddy river are not noticed, 
because there is nothing to call attention to them. Mr. 
Stone says he saw no live kelts returning from above the 
dam ; but this is not conclusive proof that they were not 
there. They would not show the same anxiety to get down 
as they had done to get up, and they most probably lay 
